Who is Kiri's father? Do all Na'vi speak the same
language? These Avatar 2 details left a lot of fans drowning.
"Avatar: The Way of Water" starts with a look at the 13 years of peace that Jake,
Neytiri, and the rest of the Omaticaya clan got to experience after the end of the first movie. The
tribe works on repairing some of the destruction the RDA caused during its tenure on Pandora,
while Jake and Neytiri start a family and end up raising four children. After just a few minutes
of runtime, however, that peace is disrupted when humans, via the RDA, return to the moon.
To some, it looks like the massive spacefaring vessels that people use to travel the stars
land on Pandora, destroying huge swaths of the ecosystem in the process. What actually happens
is much darker. The starships that humanity uses to get to Pandora can't actually land
on the surface of the planet. Humans need to use smaller shuttles to get to the ground,
but when they return to Pandora they momentarily dip their larger ships
into the moon's atmosphere. By doing that, they're able to use their engines to burn away
the forest and establish a new mining colony directly over a large deposit of unobtanium.
"Yeah, can we just take this down a couple of notches please."
Spider, whose real name is Miles, is one of the most influential new characters in "Avatar:
The Way of Water." He's just a baby when the Omatikaya force the humans to leave Pandora,
but there's no safe way for a baby to be put in cryosleep. The baby stays behind
with the few human scientists who remain on the moon, and he grows up with a foot
in two worlds. While he may physically be a human, Spider loves the culture of the Na'vi,
and he spends a majority of his time with the Sully children.
It doesn't take long for the film to reveal that Spider's father was actually Quaritch
from the first "Avatar." However, the film never explains who Spider's mother is. Fans might walk
out of the theater thinking that Spider's mother left Pandora with the other humans,
abandoning her son on the moon, but that isn't the case at all. Spider's first introduction to
the "Avatar" universe came in the comic "The High Ground," where it was revealed that his
mother was a pilot working on Pandora who died during the fight with the Omatikaya. It turns
out that both of his parents were working to kill the people who would end up raising their son.
One of the biggest surprises in "Avatar: The Way of Water" is Stephen Lang's return as Quaritch,
the aggressively militaristic leader of the RDA encampment in the first movie.
He happily destroyed Hometree and dreamed of crushing the Omatikaya completely. Then he
and Jake Sully squared off, and Neytiri ended his life with a well-timed arrow.
In "The Way of Water" not only is Quaritch back, but he's also blue. So,
how did this happen? Essentially, at some point during the events of the original "Avatar," the
RDA made a scan of Quaritch's brain. His experience on Pandora was so valuable that
the RDA wanted to preserve it for a worst-case scenario that resulted in Quaritch's death. When
the Omatikaya booted the humans off Pandora, the scan got sent back to Earth. There the RDA
inserted Quaritch's memories and personalities into a vat-grown Na'vi body, so they could send
him back to the moon with a whole new range of abilities unavailable to humans. Quaritch
in "The Way of Water" is basically a clone of his former self, but there's no telling
what effect his new physiology will ultimately have on his personality and views on Pandora.
Early in the movie, the team of Na'vi avatars led by Colonel Miles Quaritch
captures Spider. When Jake realizes that his old enemy has returned and
that someone who knows all their secrets has been compromised,
he convinces Neytiri that they need to leave the Omatikaya to protect their family and their tribe.
Obviously, getting as far away from Quaritch and the RDA as possible will help keep the
Sully family safe, but it's not exactly clear why Jake thinks leaving will help the
Omatikaya. For the time being, the Sullys are the RDA's top priority,
but one way or another all the Na'vi on Pandora are going to have to fight back against the
human invasion. Of course, by the end of the film Jake comes around to the idea
that there's nowhere to run and decides that he and his family will once again join the fight.
"Lets get it done."
"The Way of Water" makes some significant changes to the RDA's original mission of stealing
unobtainium, an immensely powerful energy source worth a fortune. When humans return to Pandora,
they use their ship engines to burn massive sections of forest to the ground. With plants
and animals out of the way, setting up a mining depot that can dig up as much unobtainium as
possible becomes a trivial matter. Now the humans have two new primary objectives on Pandora.
First is the hunting of underwater creatures called Tulkun. Though the Tulkun are every
bit as intelligent and empathetic as human beings, their brains produce an oil that's
capable of stopping human aging, so the RDA begins hunting them into extinction.
The bigger mission, however, is preparing Pandora to be the new home for humanity.
When Jake and his family leave the Omatikaya,
they flee the forest in search of a new home. The Metkayina live along the edge of the ocean,
and they spend a majority of their time underwater, swimming along the reef,
communicating with creatures like the Tulkun, and gathering resources to survive. With green
skin and fin-like appendages, the Metkayina look distinctly different from the Omatikaya,
and they have cultural practices that help them to adapt to life in the water.
"Just breathe. Breathe."
Despite all the differences between the two tribes, when the Sullys arrive at the Metkayina's
home, they have no trouble communicating with their would-be protectors. How can two tribes
from different parts of the world, with wildly different cultures, speak the same
language? It might be easy to consider this shared language a typical movie cheat moment,
but there's actually something more complex going on here. All life on Pandora is linked,
spiritually and physically, through Eywa. By connecting themselves to sacred objects like
the Spirit Tree, the Na'vi can commune with all of nature, and even with their ancestors. It's
thanks to this global network that all the Na'vi are able to communicate with each other freely.
The Tulkun hold a special place in Metkayina society. Individual Metkayina form a kind of
soul bond with a Tulkun that makes the Tulkun part of the family from
the tribe's perspective. While the Tulkun spend much of their time in the open ocean,
every year they return to the Metkayina to reconnect with their Na'vi siblings and share
stories of everything that's happened in their time apart from each other.
The Metkayina and the Tulkun don't speak the same language, but they do manage to
communicate with each other effectively. For the most part, the Metkayina talk to their
soul siblings with a kind of sign language that lets them form words while staying underwater.
The Tulkun speak with their own language and communicate as much as they can through their
actions. The fact that the Metkayina and the Tulkun understand each other probably has a
little to do with their connection through Eywa. But it also speaks to the incredible
intelligence of the Tulkun and the length of time the two groups have been connected to each other.
Kiri is one of the most mysterious characters in "Avatar: The Way of Water." Near the end of
the original "Avatar," Jake and the Omatikaya attempt to save the life of Dr. Grace Augustine
by permanently transferring her consciousness into her avatar. Unfortunately Grace doesn't
survive the process, but her avatar remains physically alive and gives birth to Kiri
sometime after the film ends. Jake and Neytiri adopt Kiri into their family.
In the 13 years between the two films, no one steps forward as Kiri's father. Kiri obviously
loves being a member of the Sully family, but she still wonders who her real father could be. While
communing with the Spirit Tree, Kiri gets the opportunity to speak with Grace's consciousness.
She asks about her father, but before Grace can answer, Kiri begins having a seizure,
severing her connection to the Spirit Tree. The story behind Kiri's conception left more
than one fan confused, but it's clearly a mystery that's being set up for a future movie to explore.
When Kiri has a seizure during her visit to the Spirit Tree,
she nearly drowns. After that she's unconscious and in critical condition,
so Norm and Max arrive at the Metkayina village via helicopter to treat Kiri. Ultimately it's
Ronal's healing practices that save Kiri for some unknown reason, but Norm tells Jake about
Kiri's seizure and warns him not to let his adopted daughter return to the Spirit Tree.
Considering that the Sullys traveled all the way to the Metkayina village to
separate themselves from the resistance fight happening back in the forest,
it seems strange that Jake has a way to communicate with his human friends. The
movie doesn't show how he's able to reach out to Norm and Max, but it's possible that his regular
wearable comms device has a range that reaches all the way back home. The helicopter flight
to the village ends up clueing Quaritch and his team into the Sullys' location,
so hopefully Jake learns to operate a little more under the radar in the future.
Throughout the movie, Kiri demonstrates a connection to Eywa that goes beyond what the other
Na'vi experience. Kiri tells Jake that she can feel Eywa around her. More than once Kiri shows
that she's able to somehow influence the natural life around her, whether through some kind of
telepathic communication or outright mind control. What's especially interesting is that Kiri doesn't
always influence the plants and animals around her in the same way. When she lies down in the forest,
the grass pulses and ripples outward from her body. Later, in the Metkayina village,
Kiri moves her hands and a school of fish mimics her. But at the movie's climax, Kiri needs to
physically connect to a group of plants before using them to ensnare the people chasing her.
One way or another, Kiri's intense connection to Eywa allows her to
influence the living things in her environment. The exact rules of her
influences are going to have to be sussed out by another "Avatar" movie.
"The wealth of this world isn't the ground. It's all around us."
Spider spends most of "The Way of Water" with Quaritch, who just so happens to be the Na'vi
clone of Spider's real father. Growing up, Spider knew that his dad was the man who destroyed
Hometree and killed countless Na'vi, so when he meets Quaritch he has no real interest in spending
time with him. Quaritch, on the other hand, seems almost immediately pulled toward Spider.
Quaritch makes Spider act as his Na'vi interpreter and all-around guide to Pandora. As a tradeoff,
Quaritch won't let the RDA torture Spider for information about the Sullys. It might
be understandable if Spider becomes attached to his pseudo-father during their time together,
but over and over again Spider challenges Quaritch's actions and tries to get him to
stop destroying lives. At the end of the film, Quaritch lets the Sully children get away in
order to save Spider's life. Not long after that, Spider sees Quaritch drowning and pulls
him onto land. Spider might have saved Quaritch as a way of returning the favor or just because he,
like the Tulkun, is committed to the idea of not killing, but either way his choice
is sure to have repercussions on the future of the "Avatar" story.